Las Soledades (Raul Ruiz)

Monday, 3 October 2011

This short fiction was originally based on possibly the ‘most famous poem from the Castilian
language’, Soledades by Gongora. In its traditional form, this piece of Latin
American literature uses dreams and tales, where daily life merges reality with
imagination.

The short fiction
was filmed on the Chiloe Island, off the coast of Chile, during the Christmas and New
Year of 1993. Raul used to say that Chiloe is
a ‘magic land of goblins and phantom ships where its inhabitants have told
tales, over and over again, for generations.’ Raul remembered that his grandfather used to
say that ‘Chiloe is the land where you can see
pink dogs hanging from trees’.

The short fiction
was filmed as planned but the ‘goblins’
plotted against the filmed material which led to a third of the negatives becoming
exposed before reaching their destination in Paris. With the film material that was
possible to save, Raul rethought the content of the story and with the help of
some friends, technicians and actors, he filmed additional sequences in his
apartment in Paris and end up with what cinema experts consider a ‘little
cinematographic jewel’.

A few weeks later,
after the film negative was developed, it was lost for eight long years in a computerised
vault of a British film laboratory. Well, its Gongora, Chiloe, Raul, the ‘goblins’,
enough ingredients for this magnificent fiction, directed by one of the most
prestigious film directors in the world.